AustLit

'“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country?” asks an Afghan cameleer as he passes through the town of Fairly, where The Sun Walks Down is set. Days earlier, the farmhand Billy considers the fear that “a lost child” evokes in the people now implanted on his Country: it is “the one cost of settling on this land that they consider unreasonable”. His sister, once employed as a nursemaid, retells the tale of the Pied Piper, speaking of her two stolen daughters; an Irish housekeeper, in counterpoint, describes an Indigenous story once overheard, about a mother spirit looking for her missing children.' (Introduction)